UAW organizes Flex-N-Gate plant in Shelby Township

Move comes two months after Flex-N-Gate opened $160 million Detroit plant

Union continues to target more Flex-N-Gate plants across U.S.

Hourly workers at the Flex-N-Gate plant in Shelby Township voted Wednesday to join the United Auto Workers union.

The UAW welcomed 309 workers into its membership ranks, the union said in an email to Crain's, as it continues to organize more Flex-N-Gate plants across the U.S.

The UAW has been working for nearly a decade to organize U.S. Flex-N-Gate plants. In 2012, UAW and labor supporters held protests outside the National Football League's rookie draft in New York, directed at Shahid Khan, who owns the auto supplier and the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The union has long accused Flex-N-Gate of paying "unlivable" hourly wages as low as $10 an hour and creating unsafe working conditions. In recent years, only about 40 percent of Flex-N-Gate's U.S. workers were union members, the UAW told Crain's sister publication Automotive News in 2012.

"Flex-N-Gate associates receive competitive wages and enjoy quality growth opportunities in a safe working environment," Flex-N-Gate said in an emailed statement. "While the vast majority of Flex-N-Gate associates are happy with their employment, they are also free to consider whether to organize, and we will always respect whatever choice they make."

The organizing of the Shelby Township plant comes only two months after Flex-N-Gate opened its $160 million Detroit plant. The non-UAW represented Detroit plant began operations in October, about 18 months after the company broke ground on a once-barren plot of land on the city's east side, producing parts for the new 2019 Ford Ranger.

The 480,000-square-foot plant employed about 240 workers, half of whom are Detroiters, when it opened with plans to reach 400 as production ramps up ahead of the Ranger going on sale in March. There are 19 current openings at the Detroit plant, from assembly workers to forklift operators, according to Flex-N-Gate's website.

The win for the UAW adds to the union's rising membership in recent years. UAW membership has increased incrementally since the end of the Great Recession, up 3.5 percent in 2017 to 430,871 members. But membership remains well below its peak of 1.5 million members in 1979 and about half as large as it was 20 years ago.

The union and Detroit's automakers — General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and FCA US LLC — will negotiate a new four-year contract in 2019. It is expected the automakers will ask for concessions.

Union dues continue to slide, down 4 percent in 2017 to $175.8 million from $182.5 million in 2016, despite the UAW remaining as one of the richest labor in the U.S., ending 2017 with net assets of $947 million.

The UAW also remains embroiled a scandal involving fraud and conspiring with FCA to skirt the U.S. Labor Management Relations Act. Several UAW leaders and a former FCA financial analyst have been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Flex-N-Gate, incorporated in 1956 and headquartered in Urbana, Ill., ranks No. 33 on the Automotive News list of the top 100 global suppliers with global revenue of $7.6 billion in 2017. About 80 percent of the supplier's business — the supply of bumpers, fascias and a variety of other parts for nearly every major automaker, is in North America, according to Automotive News research.

— Automotive News and previous reporting by Chad Livengood contributed to this report.